Did you read my post “A pinch of communism”? It is one of my favorites because I cannot even imagine a better illustration of Hayek’s pretence of knowledge than the one described there from my personal experience. Reading this week’s Economist I got another dose.

Calculating the cost of soup in the socialist commonwealth

I started working when I was 15, as an apprentice of the culinary arts. Four days of work, 2 days of school.
I was working in this pride of communist achievements, the then brand new Hotel Budapest.
(No, not the Grand)

…….. Well, what is it exactly? Sleaze or stupidity? Whenever I see dangerous stupidity with an obvious political agenda from supposedly intelligent people, I become suspicious. What is more likely? That they are actually as stupid as their arguments make them appear to be or are they just cynical political opportunists?

There is an exchange in the September 2013 issue of the Freeman wherein Gary Chartier argues thatWe Should Abandon the Term “Capitalism” while Tibor Machan says that We Should Stand By the Term “Capitalism.” The question has been debated before, I was planning for a long time myself to write this post to make the argument against using the term because I consider it a most fundamental hindrance in the battle against the enemies of freedom.

As I was sitting in the sky on my way to Thailand, I had to watch several times the same commercial for Air Canada. It was boasting about their achievement in improving ‘sustainability’. They shed some weight from their airplanes to improve fuel efficiency by 30%. They did it for the planet.

It seems that my comments on the Rasouli case hit some nerves. Off-blog, unfortunately, one nasty commenter was missing not only the ability to understand my point but also the balls to do it in public. Maybe it was my fault, so let me try again so that even leftists can comprehend it.

Meta

The dialog didn’t, doesn’t and won’t die peacefully. Yes, it is still kicking, it is still getting up to feed on the brain of whatever is still alive. The dialog is zombified. The censorship, the lawfare, the protests, the riots, the shouting down of speakers, and the firing of those who get out of line […]

In my last post I vented my frustration with the sorry state of the left-right dialog. I described the problem, but we are still left with a set of questions: What is the basis of the differences? What makes them so predictable? What stands in the way of productive communication? Political ideology There could be […]

The title of this post is not a mistake. Even though it is ‘the’ autopsy of some dialogs, I would not share it with you if they were not such perfect examples of what is going on in ‘THE’ dialog between the left and the right. The dialog at this point is pretty much dead, […]

I was observing yet another strange discussion conducted seriously on serious subjects by serious people. Serious philosophical arguments based on painfully obvious fallacies: Truth can (and should) be absolute Certain moral principles are universal The most fundamental human rights are “natural” Every one of the above statements is wrong. Truth cannot be absolute and it […]

About two months ago I received a forward from a friend with the subject: “Science needs your voice.” Of course it was baloney. They didn’t need my voice, they were asking for my money. The implied assumption is that their voice is my voice, and what science needs is their political advocacy. Both assumptions are […]